Yesterday I posted to several lists something about a recent presentation by Jim Stigler entitled, "Reflections on Mathematics Teaching and How to Improve It." Quotations from Prof. Stigler's presentation engendered one puzzled reaction from an anonymous skeptic who opined:
The way I understand the word is used in the U.S., diversity is to be celebrated, and the schools are to accommodate the students rather than the students being made to conform to the schools.
Japan, on the other hand, is famously one of the least diverse places on earth. And yet, even in Japan, according to the article, individual Japanese students do not know exactly how to be students so they are explicitly instructed. This sounds to me like the student is made to conform to the expectations of the school, not the school "accommodating diversity" in the American sense. This does not seem to support the "every country has diversity" assertion and therefore "different strategies" are required.
One of the most interesting things I picked up from reading LEARNING TO TRUST by Watson and Ecken, a book that looks at Ecken's experiences teaching a combined grade 1-2 classroom over a two-year period in inner-city Louisville, is the necessity to teach a host of skills to kids that those of us raised in middle-class communities and homes take for granted as a given that everyone brings with them to school. These include such "obvious" things as listening to and following directions, having a one-to-one conversation with a peer without turning it into a brawl (physical, verbal, or both), taking turns, and so forth.
I don't find it surprising that effective teachers in any country realize the necessity of "schooling" kids in some of these expectations and skills. The hard part is being the first teacher to try to do this for kids who are in grades 6-12. By that time, the horse has long left the barn.
It is puzzling that anyone would be surprised or confused by this: kids come to schools from a wide range of cultures and sets of attitudes about school and learning. One merely needs to set foot in a classroom with a female teacher and a male student of, say, Middle Eastern Muslim descent to note that it is a cultural norm for boys to assume that females are neither qualified to teach nor to administer discipline to them. (While this may not be universally true, I've seen it so often in SE Michigan, an area with a very sizable population from that background, that it is a lesson that can and needs to be learned quickly for most teachers here.) Clearly, such kids are going to be very problematic in typical public school settings, where a majority of teachers are female, if they are not "schooled" and to some extent enculturated. Obviously, there is no single approach taken around here to this or similar issues, and no doubt some people would argue that schools have no business treading on anyone's cultural beliefs and values. But from a practical perspective, it's likely to be imperative that these sort of things be addressed in the best interests of everyone concerned.
It would not be difficult to multiply the above example greatly. But even without something so obvious, teachers are going to have their own classroom rules and expectations, and it is foolish of them to assume that all or even most kids will come to class with the requisite skill set to adapt. Similarly, teachers are likely to meet with great difficulties when trying to implement pedagogical approaches with which students are not familiar. Something as simple as the commonly-used "Think-Pair-Share" method is going to go down in flames if kids are not used to being asked to work in pairs or simply cannot conduct themselves effectively in such situations, as described well in Watson/Ecken.
Cultural diversity and individual differences are huge factors for most American teachers, and certainly the latter play a significant role globally. To the extent that no country is without some sort of diversity (ethnic, , economic, etc.), the notion of cultural diversity is also relevant. Of course, I'm not speaking of paying lip-service to "celebrating cultures and diversity," but rather to actually knowing enough about the sorts of issues that may arise as a result of cultural differences that one can allow for and deal effectively with them as they arise in challenging or problematic ways in one's classroom or school. The culture of bullying that has been a serious concern in Japan for several decades is but one example that continues to challenge educators there.
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2 comments:
Michael,
I teach at a school that along with local (mainly Christian caucasian) students, we also bring many Asian students in with our dormitory program. It took me some time to get used to the differences in teaching international students versus the homogeneous local students.
Some differences were like you stated, such as many Korean boys had little respect for female authority. I have learned to deal with this and have gained their respect over the years. A more interesting difference that I found was in the way that Asians approached learning: they want to see problems done out so that they can copy the process already demonstrated. They are happy to memorize formulas and algorithms and shirk from dealing with questions that are conceptually based.
Since I teach upper level math mainly, these are the students that I spend a lot of time working with. They have been taught that there is a certain way to learn and have been successful with that method of learning. When they arrive to me with the idea of going on to an American college, I must help prepare them for this by "teaching" them how to think on their own and how to approach problems they have never seen before. Some students quickly embrace this, others resist.
In all, I think that there must be some teaching of how to learn and act in a classroom. While you need to be cognizant of other methods and approaches, by knowing where your students are coming from and where you want to them to end up, you can decide where you need to expand your students background and where you can let them follow the comfortable route. Isn't this part of the deal of teaching? You want to prepare your students for the next level in both an academic and social sense.
Ms. Ashton,
Thank you for your thoughtful and informative comment. Your experiences are similar to my observations of Asian students in various settings (not universally, of course, but especially in the cases of recent Chinese and Hmong immigrant kids in NYC and Michigan, respectively). When I coached upper elementary math teachers in Pontiac, MI, one of the folks I worked with had a predominantly Hmong class of 5th graders, many of whom spoke limited English. One thing that struck me was how incredibly polite and respectful of any teacher they were. But the downside of this was that they did not ask questions. I used humor to get them to come to the board to share ideas and solutions with one another (don't get me wrong: this wasn't a matter of my performing miracles. They didn't suddenly become little chatterboxes, but at least they would put their solutions up if I cajoled them), but they never asked me (or their regular teacher) any questions. It took me a while to find out from speaking with a Hmong parental volunteer that it is considered rude and disrespectful in Hmong culture to ask a teacher a question, since doing so implies that s/he hasn't done a good job of explaining things to you.
What you don't know about the culture of your students can definitely be problematic. The notion that it suffices to treat every kid like s/he's lived in the US in a middle-class suburb with white, Anglo parents just doesn't work.
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